As is well known, the range of equipment that allows users to instantly prepare products for immediate consumption has been growing over the last few years, and among the equipment in such a niche market are those destined for the preparation of carbonated beverages, whose fundamental principle of operation is based on the use of capsules that store various beverage inputs or flavoring inputs and which at the time of preparation have their contents removed and mixed with carbonated water stored in a reservoir located therein.
Those skilled in the art know that to carbonate the water it is necessary to have carbon dioxide (CO2) in contact with water. Accordingly, the carbonation towers currently employed in home appliances for the preparation of instant drinks basically comprise a cylindrical body disposed in the central region of a reservoir containing the water to be gassed, said body having upper nozzle in contact with the source of carbon dioxide, and the lower portion of the pipe contains a single hole for water entry which will be premixed to the CO2 collected by its upper nozzle. Said carbonation tower is attached to the water reservoir with the aid of screws and is further provided with a circulation pump which releases the water+CO2 mixture from the interior of the carbonation tower into the reservoir, more specifically the region in which the system serpentine is located.
However, this type of known carbonation tower has some drawbacks that end up interfering with the efficiency of the system as a whole, one of which concerns the existence of only a bottom hole to collect the water. It should be clarified that although such a hole is arranged in such a way as to allow the abstraction of water even when the reservoir has a small volume of the liquid inside it, the capture of the CO2 gas is constantly made only by the upper nozzle, therefore there is no optimization of the water consumption in the reservoir.
In addition, the fact that the known carbonation tower only performs water uptake in its lower region also does not stimulate the circulation of all stored water so that when the reservoir is full, the water remaining in the upper region ends up not to be properly carbonated since the CO2 bubbles leaving the lower region of the pipe tend to remain concentrated only at the bottom of the tank due to the suction of water promoted by the lower holes of the tower so that in case a user has to dispense several cups (I) will compute a significant time interval between the release followed by the various beverage cups and yet (ii) the quality of the beverage from the last cups will be less than that of the first cup dispensed for consumption.
It is also noted that the known carbonation tower requires the use of a recirculation pump in addition to the main pump used to feed the system, which in turn results in high costs of components used and appliance assembly time.